Organic: Public Records

While many of the record-keeping requirements of certification are onerous, they have several hidden benefits and opportunities. One of these is the chance to really educate consumers about farming and organic agriculture.

Certifying will move us toward a long-term goal for the farm, which is to achieve complete openness regarding our methods. We want to keep and maintain our records online where they can be viewed and searched by anyone. I believe very strongly in Adam Smith's contention that the base of a functioning economy is an educated, rational consumer, and suspect that many of our current economic woes are directly related to a lack of open information and rational consumer behavior. When's the last time you were able to find out exactly what went into growing the produce or meat at a grocery store? Even at farmers markets, not everyone may be entirely open about their methods and inputs, knowing that consumers instinctively want pseudo-organicness, even if they won't pay for it (what market vendor puts up a sign proudly listing all the pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers they use? They know which way the wind blows). I'd be proud to open my books and records to anyone.

Philosophically, I think consumers should have access to all information that is not directly proprietary, in order to make a better choice. I've referenced this before, but I have always loved the observation that conventional food producers should be required to post all of the sprays, fertilizers, and other inputs they use to produce that food; I suspect consumers would be quite surprised. We want our customers to know exactly what went into the production of the food they buy; not just materials, but time and effort as well. We want to sell a tomato with a sign that states when it was planted, how many hours went into maintaining it, how much it cost to irrigate it, and so on. And we want that customer to be able to go home, visit our website, and pull up that information as well.

We want to make it clear just how much actually goes into producing food, so that consumers appreciate what they're purchasing and understand why the price is set where it is, and that this is a business that charges a fair price and expects a fair living. Imagine if grocery store produce sections posted information on the wages and living conditions of the immigrant laborers who made that produce possible, making it clear how that everyday low price was achieved.

The final benefit to this goal relates to food safety. So many of the national food scares have come from operations that are not very open about their procedures and methods; let's change that. People often advocate for small farms and farmers markets as a safer alternative, which is generally a fair argument, but contamination and problems can still occur. Small does not directly equal safe. If we ever do have a customer who feels they had a problem with our produce, I want to be able to openly track the source of that product and show that we're paying attention, and I want to demonstrate to health deparments and other government agencies that we're a responsible food-handling business. Because that's what we are: a business, not a hobby, and I think we need to act like one.

This is a long-term goal, but we think it's a worthy one. We have to keep most of these records anyway for certification, and plan to store them digitally, so why not put them to use beyond our office? It may be a few years away, but we're excited about getting there.